The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "ATMs" ...
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City Hall Heist
How a humble city utilities dept. worker stole $1 million from City Hall, with no one noticing. His fellow employees had no idea that mild-mannered "nice guy" Joe Phan was a millionaire and - relying merely on a rubber stamp, an ATM machine and a willing bank - was depositing stolen city checks into his personal account at the rate of more than $360,000 annually. Seattle Weekly dived into the story explaining for the first time who Phan was, how he pulled off a million-dollar heist, and how it could happen again.
Tags: City utilities department; city hall; theft
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KMOV: Welfare Withdrawal Fraud
Thousands of Missouri tax dollars spent in casinos, strip clubs, and bars.These are Missouri welfare cards being accessed for cash at ATMs in some bizarre places. The state can’t tell you how nearly $100 million of your tax dollars are actually spent because what’s purchased with that cash isn’t tracked, but the ATM locations are recorded. News 4 spent the last two years digging into this issue and continues to find plenty of red flags.
Tags: Taxes; taxpayers; welfare cards
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Welfare Waste
An ongoing KSTP-TV investigation, led by reporter Mark Albert, has examined waste and the potential for fraud in Minnesota's public assistance programs, including free-wheeling rules that allowed welfare to be used for tattoos and liquor, withdrawn at ATMs inside casinos and bingo halls and a systematic lack of oversight in state-funded child care that can lead to millions of dollars in payments every year to families and providers that do not qualify.
Tags: public assistance; welfare; oversight
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"Their Crime, Your Dime"
Following several tips on possible "government waste," and schemes that target Seattle taxpayers, KING-TV produced this series of three stories titled "Their Crime, Your Dime." The team exposed how merchants operated a "broad scheme" that allowed citizens to convert their food stamps into cash. Another story revealed how "welfare recipients" were spending millions of "taxpayer cash in the state's casinos."
Tags: food stamps; taxpayer; welfare; State Department of Social and Health Services; ATM; casino; public records; black market
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"Cashing In"
This Dateline hidden camera investigation revealed that companies which sell privately owned ATM machines perform few, if any, background checks on the people who buy the machines. As a result, crooks have been able to buy their own ATM machines and rig them to copy the account information and personal identification numbers off of unsuspecting users. The crooks then use the information to make bogus ATM cards and withdraw money out of the users' accounts.
Tags: ATMs; automatic teller machines; consumer affairs; banking
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Quick Cash
The Sun-Sentinel series on pawnshops and burglary. "In South Florida, which suffers one of the nation's highest property-crime rates, pawnshops are a fast, easy outlet for crooks to convert stolen property to cash--like ATMS for burglars." Reporters also looked at the connection between the Fort Lauderdale area having one of the highest burglary rates in the country, while also being home to one of the highest concentrations of pawnshops in the U.S.
Tags: Cash America; pawnshops; property crime; burglary; stolen property
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The Clan Behind The Curtain
The failure of the punch cards in Florida has the voting machine industry ramped up to get a hold of any new voting machine business that may ride on the tails of the $3 billion subsidies under consideration by Congress. The Shoups, formerly the "first family of voting" and makers of the "U.S. Standard Voting Machine" are getting back into the business. Shoup senior is actually a convicted felon, and was fined and served a suspended sentence for offering to cast a better light on city commissioner Marge Tartaglione if she would give him the city's voting-machine repair business.
Tags: government relations; touch-screen technology; SVS; ATM; Automatic Voting Machine; local elections; vote- buying; vote tampering; election monitoring; SCARE; Florida recount; Bush; Gore; U.S. Standard Voting Machine; fraud; Ron Budd; Ransom Shoup II; election commissioner; Danaher 1242 c. 1982
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The Surveillance Society
Minnesota Public Radio reporters looked at situations where people were unwittingly trading their privacy for increased network and Internet access resulting in problems such as increased monitoring of employees, easy access to medical records & identity theft. Reporters found outdated laws and little enforcement of current laws.
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Spycam City
With little public awareness and no debate, video surveillance cameras have become common in many U.S. cities . In New York, no law regulates video surveillance (except to require camera at ATM machines). Boal investigates the effect of these cameras and their impact on a person's privacy.
Tags: None